Dr. Syed Farid Alatas is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He lectured at the University of Malaya in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies prior to joining NUS. His areas of interest are historical sociology, the sociology of social science, the sociology of religion and inter-religious dialogue. Among his recent books is Alternative Discourse in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism (Sage, 2006). His book on the thought of Ibn Khaldun is forthcoming in 2012 by Oxford University Press and I.B. Tauris. Another book on Ibn Khaldun’s historical sociology is forthcoming by Routledge. Some of his published journal articles include: “Ibn Khaldun”, (in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists: Classical Social Theorists, Vol I, ed. Ritzer, George and Stepinsky, Jeffrey. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley & Sons, pp. 12-29, 2011); “Intellectual and Structural Challenges into Academic Dependency”, (in Academic Dependency in the Social Sciences: Structural Reality and Intellectual Challenges, ed. Kajhinka, Sinha-Kerkhoff and Syed Farid Alatas. Manohar, pp. 55-77, 2010); and “Religion and Reform: Two Exemplars for Autonomous Sociology in the Non-western Context”, (in The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions. London, UK: SAGE Publications, pp. 29-40, 2010).